It is well known in the camera art to provide a moveable cover, which is effective in a first position for covering and thereby protecting an image capture lens and an electronic display. Currently, cameras are including electronic displays on the rear portion of the camera housing for reviewing images captured by the camera. These displays are becoming higher resolution, larger and thus more expensive, which permit a user to view the image that is about to be or just was captured by the camera. Examples of specific technologies used in such displays are liquid crystal displays (LCD) and organic light emitting displays (OLED). One problem with these displays is that they are open to their environment in their active or operative positions. With such an expensive component, they are very vulnerable to damage such as scratches or surface cracks through normal use and storage.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,822,638 to Yoshida et al., a camera is shown with a moveable cover which is used to protect a capture lens and an electronic display when the camera is in a storage position. However, in an operative position, the electronic display is exposed and therefore vulnerable to damage. Likewise in U.S. Pat. No. 5,943,520 to Komatsuzaki et al., a camera is shown with camera control buttons, capture lens, and electronic display becoming available to the user when a sliding cover is moved to a first active position. The first active position does not protect the electronic display from damage during camera usage.
Prior art displays being protected by a moveable cover when in a second storage position have typically been status displays for displaying the frame number, flash status, etc. The segments used to form characters and numerals in these status displays are large, and therefore scratches or other superficial damage doesn""t significantly impact the function of these status displays. As electronic displays are now being used to display the actual image captured, superficial damage significantly impacts the ability of the display to accurately render the details of the captured scene. As such, a further problem with these displays is that they are relatively small displays, and therefore difficult for the user to see the detail in the picture. The sliding covers in the prior art do not help the user to more easily view the displays. These and other problems will be solved by the present invention.
It is an object of the present invention to provide protection of both camera capture lens and the electronic display with a very simple structure.
This object is achieved by a protective cover for a camera having a housing with front and rear portions, the front portion including a mounting structure for an image capture lens and the rear portion having an electronic image display, the protective cover comprising:
a) front and rear portions, the cover being slideably mounted on the camera so that it is effective in at least a first camera active position and in a second camera storage position;
b) the rear portion including an opening corresponding to the electronic image display such that, in the first camera active position, the opening corresponds to and permits viewing of the electronic image display and in the second camera storage position, the rear portion covers the electronic image display to protect such electronic image display; and
c) the front portion being effective to cover the image capture lens in the second camera storage position and permit the image capture lens to capture an image in the first camera active position.
It is an advantage of the present invention that the cover can effectively protect the display in both the storage position and the active position. It further can also protect the lens in the storage position.
A feature of the present invention is that the cover can include a lens that, in the active position, magnifies the display image.